Course XXV - Teaching 15: Saint Martin

Called “The Unknown Philosopher”, the pseudonym he adopted for his writings, he was born in Amboise (France), on January 18, 1743, in a family of the Nobility. He was educated by his father according to serious costumes of those days, and by his stepmother, since his mother had died in giving birth to him; the former did it with such tenderness that this impression would be decisive in the future for his affections.
They would cause him to love God and men with great purity, and his memory of them would be always very pleasant for this philosopher at every phase of his life.
In every stage of his life there will be a saintly loved human.
His heart, being prepared like that for love, from the first readings at an age when intelligence would loom, got an impression and trends that were still more decisive, inner and mystical. Abbadie’s book, “Art of self-knowledge”, initiated him in this body of studies of himself and meditations about the divine type of all perfection, which would be the Great Work of all his life.
Physically prepared for great spiritual flights, his physical system was very delicate, but doubtless predisposed to the life of the spirit. In regard to this, he says in his “My historical and philosophical portrait”: “I changed skin seven times in my childhood, and I do not know if because this accident I have so little of astral”.
There is not much information about his first school years, but to please his father and the protector of his family, the Duke of Choiseul, he follows the career of right, “but he would dedicate himself rather to the natural bases of justice than to the rules of jurisprudence, whose study he would repudiate, according to his biographer M. Gence.
This can be explained because at the age of 18 he already would know the philosophers in vogue: Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau, and when he got used to learn laws and costumes with those masters, it is natural to suppose that Saint Martin would coldly hear the word of simple professors of jurisprudence. As to the repugnance he felt for codes and consuetudinary traditions applied to justice, also this can be explained because of his eminently spiritualistic character.
Despite this he continues his studies and graduates as a lawyer, and always to please his father he enters the Magistracy, a career that he abandons six months later despite his good perspectives, since with the protection of the Duke of Choiseul it would be easy for him to succeed an uncle that in those days occupied a post as Counsellor of State.
He starts his career as a soldier despite he hated war, not to gain a position or to distinguish himself conspicuously, but to follow his favorite studies, religion and philosophy, by escaping this way from materialist doctrines of his time, which would alarm his tender and pious soul.
Thanks to the protection of the Duke of Choiseul, enters the regiment of Foix as a second lieutenant, in the garrison of Bordeaux, though he had not any military instruction.
In this city he found the food that his soul was demanding: knowledge.
In fact he finds there one of those extraordinary men, Great Hierophant of secret Initiations: Martines de Pasqualis, a Portuguese of Israelite origin, who would initiate adepts since 1754 in several cities of France, over all in Paris, Bordeaux and Lyon.
Seemingly none of his pupils achieved the total knowledge of his secrets, since the same Saint Martin, who had to be one of his most eminent disciples, declared that the Master did not find them sufficiently advanced to acquaint them with the highest knowledge.
At this School, Martines de Pasqualis offered a body of teachings and symbols that along with certain theurgical operations, works and prayers, formed a worship of a kind that enabled to contact higher Entities.
In regard to this, 25 years later Saint Martin would say that the Divine Wisdom only uses Agents and Virtues to make know the Word within us; he would understand by these terms intermediary powers between God and man, for which a great purity of body and imagination would be necessary.
These intermediaries would be necessary until the time when a man completes the evolutionary cycle, and at the end of the latter he is equal to God and united with Him.
Saint Martin continues his esoteric studies in Bordeaux since 1766, and very soon his wishes of speaking to the masses and of acting with vigor with them wake up in him.
Following the duties of his profession, he leaves Bordeaux in 1768 and stays at the garrison of Lorient and Longway, and this year also his Master moves to Lyon and Paris, where he founds new lodges.
Possibly this separation makes Saint Martin quit his career as a soldier in 1771; in his case this is a serious decision, implied to be self-sufficient, and he had not resources and would run the risk of displeasing his father, but fortunately this did not happen.
His vocation is already perfectly established. He will be a Director of souls. The injunction comes from above, and his life will be entirely devoted to it and to his own perfection.
He moves to Paris, where very soon contacts the pupils of Martines de Pasqualis: the Count D’Gauterive, the Marchionesse de la Croix Cazette and the Abbe Fournié.
His friendship with the two first will last for life as a result of their very similar aspirations, and especially with the Count D’Hauterive, whom he meets since 1774 in Lyon, city to which Saint Martin moves and where Martines de Pasqualis has founded the Lodge of Beneficence. In it he followed a course of studies and along with D’Hauterive they devoted themselves for three years to trying to contact Higher Beings and achieving the physical knowledge of the “Active and Intelligent Cause”, a name with which this theurgical School knew the Logos, the Word or the Son of God.
In that time, that is, when he was approximately at the age of 30, Saint Martin already was gladly accepted in the great world. He is described as endowed of an expressive figure, noble gesture, and full of distinction and reserve. His demeanor would announce a wish as much to please and as to give something. Very soon he was quite known and everywhere people looked for him with great interest. He had to act in a society too much mixed, little serious and worldly, where the part to play was considerable since the beginning.
Being born in the world and loving it, always joyful and spiritual when he should be, and usually a serious and humble theosophist with the aspect of an inspired man, he enjoyed any deference that the female society grants to such attitude.
His doctrine totally opposite to the superficial philosophy of those days was precisely called to impress those spirits ready to listen to the great truth.
And while he was fulfilling his mission as a director of souls in such variegated society, the old studies would fructify in long meditations that would culminate in 1775 with the publication of his work “About errors and the Truth”, published in Lyon, under the pseudonym of “The Unknown Philosopher”. This book, a refutation of materialistic theories in vogue in those days, reveals the the great power manifested in the Universe and guiding it –its active cause– is the Divine Word, the Logos or Word. It is through the Word, through the Son of God, how the material world and the spiritual world were created. The Word is the unity of all moral or physical powers. It is through him, or perhaps emanated from him, that we have everything that exists.
The latter, the theory of emanation arose the wrath of his adversaries, but his friends, seeing in him a bold and powerful spiritual champion whom century wanted or seemingly considered definitely lost, gathered around him with great deference. Seemingly this debut would reveal a deep writer, and though in those days Martines de Pasqualis stayed among them, he did not publish anything and, on the contrary, he passed entirely unnoticed. Possibly this brought the confusion of attributing to Saint Martin the foundation of the School of Martinists in Germany and other countries of the North, which seemingly was not like that, for it was a conglomerate of lodges and sanctuaries that adopted rather Martines de Pasqualis’ theories than that of his disciple.
Saint Martin failed, seemingly as a founder, and in fact the Martinists’ school had to be named Martinesists’ to differentiate it from Saint Martin’s disciples.
His true mission was not an external work, but the above mentioned mission as director of souls, to such extent that from his writings and intimate correspondence is clearly deduced that, besides the labor of his own perfection, his work was that of a missionary of the Great Work entrusted to him. And he was fervently devoted, –full of strong convictions, enjoying wisely a well governed youth, driven by success and very well accepted though he did not achieve his object, that is, the direction of the soul, being very active his propaganda in the great world.
He would contact numberless people in many locations of France, and in all of them there were groups that would make psychical and mediumistic experiments. This was not Saint Martin’s specialty and though he recognized the reality of certain results, he preferred to act a teacher, which would give him many satisfactions and in certain cases admirable results.
He would look for his disciples among the most outstanding personalities of his time, or men of sciences such as the astronomer Lalande that did not understand him, or the Cardinal Richelieu whom he met several times, but that finally he had to abandon because of his age and deafness.
Also he left aside the Duke of Orleans, who would become famous years later as a result of the revolution despite already in that time the Duke was the highest exponent of new ideas that would change the face of France.
He would not attach to men; he was only in pursuit of those souls that needed his guide.
In 1778, at the age of 35, he moves to Toulouse, where his heart seemingly wants to betray him twice and thinks of getting married. But later, he would consider both experiences as true trials, concluding that there was nothing on Earth that could attach him and remove him from his mission.
He stayed few months in that locality and returned to Paris, a city that he called his purgatory.